The Affairs of Anatol

The usual DeMille mix of sex, sin, and moralizing but with tongue firmly in place. Poor Anatol (Wallace Reid) is always "rescuing" women, much to the consternation of his wife Vivian (Gloria Swanson) who always has Max (Elliott Dexter) hanging around her.

The first rescue is of "a bubble-head jazz girl" named Emilie (Wanda Hawley) who is clearly a gold digger, She has poor old Gordon (Theodore Roberts) in her pocket but decides to go after Anatol who thinks he can redeem the poor girl. Meanwhile all she wants is a new victim. There's a great scene of redemption when Anatol tells Emilie she must throw away all her jewels in order to be cleansed. She immediately empties her jewel boxes and puts the empty boxes in a valise. They drive to the river where she throws away the empty boxes. Foolish Anatol believes her but learns the sad truth when he interrupts a wild dinner party Emilie is throwing.

Off to the country for purity and clean air, Anatol and Vivian are rowing in a river when a simple country girl Annie (Agnes Ayres) throws herself off a bridge. They dredge her out and revive her but Annie finds Anatol's wallet on the ground and steals it. After she is "saved" she runs home to husband Abner (Monte Blue) and replaces the money she stole from his church collection box. So much for country purity.

Back in the city Anatol decides to go out on the town, so Vivian decides to wear her :lowest gown" and "highest heals" and go out as well. Anatol falls into the clutches of the notorious nightclub star Satan Synne (Bebe Daniels) who lures Anatol into her den called "the Devil's Cloister." In the middle of vamping him, she gets a couple phone calls. It seems her husband is undergoing an operation for wounds suffered during the World War. When Anatol learns the truth, he gives Satan the money she needs to save her husband.

But back home, he finds Vivian has not come home from her night of clubbing. When she and Max finally come in a 9 AM he demands to know if she's be unfaithful. She refuses to answer. At that moment, a famous hypnotist (Theodore Kosloff) arrives and is compelled by Anatol to secretly put her in a trance and answer his questions. He does, but Max pleads with Anatol that to do this will forever ruin his marriage no matter what the answer is. Will Anatol force the issue? Reid and Swanson are terrific here as the stars, but the fallen women, Hawley, Ayres, and Daniels, all come off well also. Dexter and Blue have little to do. Roberts fumes and Kosloff looks mysterious. And yes that's Polly Moran as the nightclub entertainer.

The film has beautifully colored title cards and boasts nice tinting throughout. This is a must for silent film fans and was an important film for superstars Gloria Swanson, Wallace Reid, and Bebe Daniels.

Drawn to this by the irresistable and rare chance of seeing Wallace Reid and Gloria Swanson working together on a film, I had heard about it through reference books (and also about Swanson's recollections of the film not being happy due to feeling uncomfortable with Reid at the time), and expected exactly what I got - a fun piece with some nice touches (Gloria's playful mood before she feels slighted by Wanda Hawley's flapper girl; Reid trashing Hawley's apartment when he realises she did not have pure intentions towards him after all; Agnes Ayres and Reid sharing a kiss in the woods while Gloria has gone to fetch a doctor to attend to Ayres, 'half-drowned' when she left; and best of all, Bebe Daniels as the absurdly named Satan Synne who is really a domesticated pussy cat chasing young men for cash to help her sick husband). The Affairs ... also benefits from having a lovely series of colour tints throughout. A little overlong perhaps (and too much focus on Hawley at the expense of the other girls encountered by Tony) but another fascinating early piece from De Mille. Sad to think that Wallace Reid would be dead by early '23. The movies' loss.

An interesting document of almost one hundred years ago. Your enjoyment of this will obviously depend on whether you like silents or not. As a look way back to the beginnings of narrative film making and a fashion show of what woman wore then this has some interest. Gloria is unquestionably the star and she holds the screen with no problem. A renown clotheshorse her outfits are bizarre in the extreme to the modern eye but were the height of high fashion in their day. It's also a rare chance to see the doomed Wallace Reid in one of his few existing films. He was deep in the throes of the morphine addiction that would kill him within two years when this was made and looks shockingly old when you realize he was only 29 at the time, he appears 50 minimum.

THE AFFAIRS OF ANATOL, which are really only his attempts to help unhappy or wayward women, has left his own marriage in a very precarious predicament.

During the 1920's, director Cecil B. DeMille became famous for two types of film - the lavish historical spectacle & the elaborate, somewhat salacious, social comedy. ANATOL is an example of the latter. While its plot is insignificant (and faintly ludicrous), it is still quite enjoyable to watch, and can boast of fine performances & superior production values.

In the title role, Wallace Reid acquits himself very well as the hapless rich chump whose noble deeds always seem to backfire. Good-natured & affable, he is only too susceptible to damsels in distress. But even this worm can turn, and his violent scenes - laying waste the apartment of a mendacious maiden, crashing into his wife's locked boudoir - show the energy & passion of which this nearly forgotten star was capable.

Gloria Swanson, as Reid's lively spouse; Wanda Hawley as a millionaire's courtesan; Agnes Ayres as a duplicitous country wife; and diabolic Bebe Daniels as the ultimate vamp, all add greatly to the enjoyment of the proceedings, slinking about in fashions (all except Miss Ayres) only crazy movie folk of the 1920's could ever truly get by with.

Movie mavens will have no trouble spotting the irrepressible Polly Moran as a zany nightclub orchestra leader.

A Wallace Reid film is a rather rare & wonderful thing now, as most of them seem to have vanished long ago. Reid, immensely popular in his day, was the epitome of the American Hero. Tragically, his story became a living nightmare. Injuries received while on location in Oregon in 1919 left him seemingly unable to complete his role. The Paramount Studio doctor was dispatched to plug him full of morphine and put him back in front of the cameras. It worked, but already weakened by alcoholism, Reid now became a helpless morphine addict. His problem was an open secret in Hollywood, but instead of the real help he desperately needed, he was given more of the deadly drug. His box office returns were considered too valuable, and the Studio pushed him through an insufferable number of films - 7 in 1921, 8 in 1922. After ANATOL, in which it was becoming obvious that his good looks were beginning to decay, Reid made 11 more films in increasing agony. His death on January 18, 1923, was officially attributed to the influenza which finally overcame the body debilitated by alcohol & drug addiction. Wallace Reid was only 31 years old.

The Affairs of Anatol (1921)

A long, involved, romantic and slightly moralizing movie about a really good hearted man caught between two women. That's the reason to watch it, that and Gloria Swanson in the lead as the wife. The other woman (Wanda Hawley) is a bit of a siren, and our good fellow is trying to be a charitable fellow with her, and only gets himself in trouble. She plays him like a child.

The year, 1921, is just at the point where the silent film is solidifying and getting sophisticated in a modern sense. There is still a lot of static (fixed) camera in this one (even though one of the photographers was the legendary Karl Struss). This puts the emphasis on the acting, which rises to the occasion. The copy I saw had some great hand colored title cards and some scenes that were toned in rich yellows or other colors, which made it all quite fun. The conflict between the two women, and the intrusion of another man or two, make this a classic soap opera kind of drama, well done and clear enough to follow once you get the basic flow. There are sort of two halves, and the second part out in the country is a nice shift even though the theme remains similar.

Of interest? The director, Cecil B. De Mille, had a hugely influential and long career, and this is toward the beginning, and it shows his tendency to find the popular themes that audiences would connect with, rather than push technical or aesthetic boundaries. Some might call him a populist, interest above all in success, but he was an expert director who knew how to make a movie really coherent, handling the story and actors with precision and a sympathetic feel. And the subject matter here is actually a bit edgy--a married man hanging out with a woman in her most intimate spaces. The play of the "bad" woman against the "good" one is a little expected, of course, but it's such a heartwrenching problem for this nice guy who just wants to help (or so he says), it's painfully enjoyable to watch.